A Simple Artifact Retrieval
by Maria Rene
Summary: A quick trip to nab an artifact turns into a far bigger adventure than anticipated.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: My original character Joanne, the Warehouse pilot, who has a bit part in a couple of my other works, has always kind of wished for an artifact-hunting adventure of her own, so I wrote this to grant her that wish. Special thanks to KJay99 for the beta work, and LadyNRA for the heaps of encouragement! I appreciate you both, very much.

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><p>Taking a sip of coffee strong enough to impart a caffeine high to the dead at twenty paces, a casually-dressed woman sat at the lone table in the sparsely-furnished room, reviewing charts and studying a radar screen on her laptop computer. Periodically, her mind drifted to the football game she was missing, but Mrs. Frederic had personally visited to request that she come to work, and there was just no way you said no to that woman. Not if you valued your life, anyway, which Joanne did, very much. Which was why, as soon as her presence had been requested, she'd only paused long enough to tug her favourite player's jersey off and pull on a more respectable blue t-shirt before grabbing her gear and hustling to the airfield.<p>

After a quick glance at the current score online, she shifted her focus from the game, and back to the task she'd been called in for – taking Artie on a quick artifact-hunting jaunt to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Wavy hair cascaded over her shoulders, blocking her view of the chart spread out to her left for a moment before she responded by expertly braiding it without taking her eyes off the array of information she needed to process. Joanne smiled, but didn't look up from her paperwork when she heard the door open, and what sounded like a drunken pack mule stumbling into the room.

"Still haven't learned to pack light?" she asked her companion. The sound of grumbling was drowned out by the racket of luggage being dropped on the floor near her seat, and a carry-on bag being dropped onto the table, creating a breeze that shot her weight and balance chart halfway across the room. Knowing that it had been intentional, she simply turned to look at the man standing just slightly outside of smacking-range.

"I'll pick it up," Artie muttered, already moving to put things right. More grumbling and complaining came along with, as he stooped to fetch the sheet of paper. "Floors should be higher than this."

Joanne laughed at the unexpected, nonsensical complaint as she stretched out her hand to take the page Artie offered. "Thank you," she said, more genuinely than her troublesome colleague probably deserved. She nudged the chair next to hers, indicating her expectation that Artie sit down next to her. When he did, she handed him a luggage scale.

"Why do you bother with weight and balance when it's just the two of us?" Artie asked as he weighed each bag and gave her the values. "The plane seats, what, five? I seriously doubt that my overnight bag is going to push you out of the envelope."

"First, it seats seven, not five. Second, I do my paperwork because it ought to be done, not because I can't tell on sight when my bird is unbalanced." Artie rolled his eyes at his friend's response. He was as big on following procedure as one could be, but Joanne's habit of crossing every t and dotting every i bordered, in his opinion, on "certifiably insane" territory. Then again, he would be the first to admit, that was perhaps a prerequisite of working at the Warehouse.

"How's the weather looking?" Artie asked, glancing at the screen that displayed radar data. Joanne didn't look up until she was finished with her calculations and had flipped to the page with her route on it. Glancing at the chart unfolded on the table before her, she mentally correlated the route with the weather.

Joanne hummed and tapped a finger against the southwest corner of Kansas. "We're going to have to go further south, probably, than I've laid out here. It's not on the radar yet, but their dew point is climbing at HQG, and pressure's dropping faster than the governor's approval rating. And it's like that at several points north, too. That's going to turn into a squall line on me, I think."

"What's HQG?" Artie asked.

"Airport," Joanne answered, pointing at it on the chart. Artie rolled his eyes at that.

"What city?" he asked, making the intent of his question more clear. Joanne looked up at him for a second, then turned back to her work with a shrug.

"No idea. A city we're going to fly south to avoid, that's all we need to know about it today." Joanne fell quiet as she went over the automatically-generated route, making edits as needed to account for current conditions. "Why are we going to Albuquerque?" she asked in a quiet moment, between tasks.

"Would you believe Bugs Bunny's carrot stick?" Artie asked with a chuckle, getting a laugh from his friend in response. "No, I'm joking, we already have... anyway, some artifacts from the earliest settlements at Albuquerque have turned up, and a couple of them are imbued with... with a fairly strong survival instinct, I guess you could say. I want to pick them up before anybody realizes the historical significance, and it gets tougher to snag them." Joanne nodded at that, slightly puzzled at Artie's suggestion that the Warehouse did, in fact, contain a cartoon vegetable, but she opted to let that one go, for sanity's sake.

"That why you've packed for an expedition?" she asked, nodding towards the pile of luggage without even looking at it. She still wasn't sure how big the pile was, mostly because she knew it wouldn't matter anyway as long as every item's weight was accounted for properly on her paperwork.

"The artifacts are still at the dig site," Artie said by way of explanation. "In fact, I was hoping that you might, that you could help me with retrieving them." Joanne's eyebrow shot up at that.

"I'm a pilot, not an agent," she shot back almost without thinking.

"It's retrieval of artifacts sitting in a crate, unsecured, at an archaeological dig site. We rent a jeep, drive up, grab them, and get out of there. I don't even need – it's an hour's drive from the airport. I just didn't feel like making the trip alone." Joanne snickered at that. If there was one thing she'd learned about the Warehouse in her years working as Mrs. Frederic's personal pilot, it was that nothing about artifact retrieval was simple, neat, or quick. But she'd always been curious, and the thought of a unique adventure appealed to the adrenaline junky that hid beneath her professional exterior.

"I'm guessing that's why you suggested hiking shoes," Joanne mused, more to herself than to Artie, who grunted in the affirmative in reply anyhow. She fished in her pocket for a keyring, and held it out towards her travel companion. "I've got about ten or fifteen minutes of paperwork left to do, if you want to go get settled. I want all your luggage," she said, glancing at the pile, then freezing when she saw all of it. "Artie, where... my orders were out and back, no overnight stay. What _is_ all that stuff?"

"Overnight bag, just in case," Artie said, pointing to the duffel Joanne was accustomed to him hauling on board, before shifting his focus, and hers, onto the next bag. "Maps, reference material, and tools. Artifact retrieval gear. Emergency supplies. And my carry-on bag." Joanne gazed, bemused, at her friend. She considered reminding him that the regents' planes come with survival gear appropriate for the kinds of things that tend to come up in the artifact business, but stopped herself. Another glance at the weight chart confirmed that there was no particular reason, on her part, to get bent out of shape about over-packing, and it would take far longer to get rid of the excess than it would to simply load up and go. She shrugged and handed over the keys.

"If you think you need it all, go load it all in the aft cargo compartment. I need to get the last of this paperwork filed, so I'll be out in just a few minutes." She bit back a laugh, watching Artie try to scoop everything up. Obviously, he'd counted on her being willing to help him schlep his quarter-ton of equipment, but she had no intention of enabling his habit. By the time she strutted out to her plane, flight bag in one hand and backpack over her shoulder, Artie was just shoving the last of his stuff into the cargo area she'd specified. It was nearly full.

Shaking her head again, Joanne simply boarded the plane and tossed her own bag down into an unneeded passenger seat. She paused to buckle it in by its straps before proceeding to the flight deck, smiling to herself as she remembered the day she'd learned never, ever to just lob a backpack into the passenger cabin and take off, as if it were the back seat of her personal car. Mrs. Frederic had looked disapprovingly at the unsecured bag, but said nothing, and Joanne had written it off as the woman's standard disposition, until the artifact they were transporting had suddenly gone haywire, producing more turbulence than Joanne had ever experienced in her life. In a plane that she normally flew with three fingertips, it had taken all she had to keep the craft aloft.

By the time the artifact had been brought back under control, Joanne's pack had slammed around half the cabin, its zipper giving out, dumping the contents of the bag out all over the place. Mrs. Frederic hadn't said a word at their fueling stop as she helped Joanne pick up the scattered clothes, but she smiled knowingly and made a point of buckling the bag into its seat, subtly making her point to the then-new staff member. That – and not to pack your best silk undergarments on a trip with your boss – was a lesson she would never forget.

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><p>AN: I know, I know, it's a weird place to leave y'all hanging, but the best place for it is waaaaay far along, so I just had to pick a spot for a chapter break!


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: And here we have the apparently-traditional party favors for my readers, for this year! Extra special thanks to KJay99 for editing, revising, putting up with my general mushiness, and knowing when to say the tough things.

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><p>Artie was still fighting with the cargo when she had her flight bag settled in its place, so Joanne took the opportunity to walk around the exterior of her plane again. She'd done it when she first got to the airport, of course, but she liked to double-check her fuel levels and make one last visual inspection of everything, taking extra care to look for the kinds of things she knew from experience that she tended to miss on the first pass. About the time she got around to poking at the elevator, she realized she had a shadow.<p>

"Here, I want you to know what this should feel like," she said to Artie, who gave her a hesitant look when he realized he'd been caught. She waited for the agent to reach up and grab the elevator, then demonstrated what she wanted him to notice. "See how far it moves? Totally different from that Fokker you're used to," she pointed out, then led him along on the rest of the inspection. Artie was good enough with flying artifact planes, but Joanne had taken it upon herself to make sure he got familiar with the Warehouse fleet, as well – often against the senior agent's will, but she insisted, and over time, he had given in.

Once the pair was back inside the plane, Joanne handed Artie a sheet of paper, folded lengthwise, with a lengthy list filling both impromptu columns, on both sides of the page. "What's this?" Artie asked, even though he was already reading it and had a pretty good idea of what it was.

"I want to watch you do the preflight checklist," Joanne said brightly. Artie considered the seemingly-endless list for a moment, then looked directly into blue eyes that practically glittered with energy.

"No," he said, trying to hand the paper back.

"Then I'll do it, and you can do takeoff," she said as she reached to accept the returned list, but before she could get a hand on it, Artie jerked it back from her.

"You know what, I've got this," came his irritated retort. Joanne smiled at that. It had been a while since she'd worked closely with the Warehouse supervisor, but she clearly hadn't lost her skill at the offbeat way Artie had to be handled, if she expected him to do what she wanted. She watched carefully as he went down the list that she could recite in her sleep, dutifully checking the positioning of each switch, and the information given on the PFD that provided nearly all of the plane's vital information.

He took easily two or three times longer than she would have, to do the work, but she had expected and planned for that. There had been, after all, a time when it had taken her even longer than this, to prepare for flight. Several long minutes later, Artie handed the page back, looking just a tad satisfied with himself at a task well-done. Joanne took the page back and made a small show of stowing it, knowing that Artie was watching.

"Now I know that if it's ever needed, I can trust you to do that for me," she said with a satisfied nod. "Also, did you notice that some of the steps were in a larger font, and bold?"

"How could I miss it?" Artie asked in response.

"If you ever have to take off in an emergency situation, those are the steps you cannot skip. Everything else is negotiable, in life-or-death situations." Artie raised an eyebrow at Joanne's explanation of the seemingly random font styles. "Trust me, I've worked that list down to an art... that is the barest of the bare minimums, but you can fly like that if you have to." Joanne glanced at her colleague, then put her seatbelt on noisily, wordlessly indicating that he should do the same.

Artie sighed and began to fumble with the uncomfortable five-point restraint. He'd hoped to put it off for the last possible moment, but as far as the pilot was concerned, that moment came before they would taxi to the end of the runway, not after. Once Joanne was confident that the grouchy agent wasn't going anywhere, she let off the brakes and let the jet pull itself towards the runway, guiding it this way and that by strategic application of the brakes.

"So what's your aversion to performing takeoff for me?" Joanne asked after she'd made her initial climb and gotten clear of other airport traffic. They were only a quarter of the way to her goal of about twenty thousand feet, but the busy part was over with, and she had time to devote to conversation as she continued to nudge them towards their planned route. She glanced over at Artie, who looked, as she'd expected, like he had no intention of answering her question. "Seriously, man... what's your hangup?"

"The Fokker handles takeoff by itself," he explained after a moment. "You set the altimeter like a clock, and it does the rest."

"I have got to try that thing one of these days," Joanne muttered. "Does it have auto-land as well?"

"If you mean that you set the altimeter to zero and make sure there's flat ground in front of you, sure," Artie responded. Joanne chuckled at that.

"So the problem is that you've never had to do it, and it freaks you out," she summarized. Artie's uncomfortable sigh answered that perfectly well. "Dude... you've watched me do it a thousand times. I'm right here; you really think I'm going to let you do something wrong? Okay, landing is a little more complex, but taking off is easy. You go fast and pull up. Just don't be too forceful about it, and the airplane will do the rest... simple physics."

She could tell Artie wasn't convinced, but before she could continue encouraging him, the intermittent radio chatter caught her attention. Artie raised one eyebrow in total confusion as his friend devolved into unintelligible chatter, reminding him of the time when the TV at Leena's had gotten stuck in a foreign language audio setting.

"Yeah, you're going to have to learn this, eventually, too," Joanne said to the baffled agent in between exchanges with the disembodied voice. "It's really not as complex as it sounds," she said, remembering the way her own instructor had explained it, years ago, when she was just as confused and nervous as Artie looked. "You just need to say who you're talking to, then who you are, then what you want from them. That's all that guy did just now... got my attention, identified himself, and asked me to go down a thousand feet, so that's what we're doing. That's all; it's the same format, every time. The rest is just remembering the vocabulary. Just listen and pick up what you can." Joanne considered explaining more, but that seemed like enough to satisfy her companion for now, so she fell quiet.

They'd been in the air for a while when Joanne decided Artie seemed ready for another lesson. More specifically, he was getting bored and starting to rifle through her flight bag for the granola bars he knew she kept in there, and she wanted to redirect his focus before he discovered and ate the mocha-vanilla swirl bar she kept as an emergency mood-booster in case of bad day.

"Can you hold straight and level for me so I can walk back for a minute?" she asked, pulling him away from his rummaging. Artie put the bag back in its place and reached gingerly to take the controls.

"All right, I've got it," Artie said, verbally releasing the pilot so she could make her way to the lavatory. Joanne stretched as she got up from her seat, listening to her back pop as it settled into a better alignment. She walked carefully through the passenger cabin with a confidence borne of years of experience, as if she couldn't even feel the bumps that would have an inexperienced passenger clinging to the furniture and stumbling down the aisle.

"How's she feel?" Joanne asked, after Artie had been flying for a few minutes. The air was smooth and the task she'd given him was easy, but she could tell by his grip that he was a little nervous about it.

"Incredibly easy to control, or.. or to over-control, for that matter," Artie answered. Joanne nodded at that, even though he wasn't looking at her.

"It's a bit like modern cars," she explained. "It takes a light touch, as compared to the older models. You also have the computerized screen feeding you information, instead of mechanical instruments, which is a lot easier to read in turbulence. The system pretty much tells you what you need to know, instead of the airplane relying so heavily on you to notice any changes in instrument readings. There's still a lot that you have to intuit based on the clues it presents, but it lets you know when something's wrong." Artie knew most of this information, Joanne knew, but she mostly was reviewing it to ease his nervousness about flying something that was substantially bigger and more complex than than the antique biplane, at the Warehouse, that he was accustomed to.

As Joanne guided the plane along their course, she continued teaching her less-than-enthusiastic captive audience, bit by bit, making it seem like a short trip before it was time to land. With practiced hands, Joanne coordinated her reduction in airspeed with the extending flaps, bringing the small craft gently in to Albuquerque's airfield. Traffic being nonexistent, she made a very quick taxi to the hangar where Artie had arranged for her to stow the airplane.

Off to the side of the hangar sat an antiquated jeep, with its keys acting as a paperweight holding some documentation down. Artie brightened at that. "Oh good, our rental is already here," he said. Joanne raised an eyebrow, but didn't bother to ask where Artie had managed to unearth that thing. It looked like something that Fred Flintstone would have rented, in her opinion, but it had four tires, so as long as the engine started, that was good enough for her.

Once she'd secured her airplane, Joanne swung herself up into the passenger seat of the jeep and began playing with radio stations while Artie continued to load his never-ending pile of luggage. The bags weren't really as big as they'd first looked, she'd realized when he was unloading them from the plane. It was just the fact that he'd compartmentalized, that made it seem like he'd brought half the Warehouse along on the excursion. Not that that realization had made her stop teasing him about it, of course. She settled the needle of the antiquated radio onto the local hip-hop station, near as she could tell, and waited expectantly.

Sure enough, when Artie started the engine, he was treated to loud, if a bit static-y, dance music. With a shout of irritation, he grabbed for the radio with both hands, twisting and pushing everything until he found the power control. He glared at his companion, who trembled with silent laughter in the next seat. "Wow, the last person who used this car had some interesting taste in music," she said between laughs, after a moment, just to aggravate Artie a little more.

"What did I do to you?" he asked after regarding her for a moment.

"You wouldn't take off, even though I was right there telling you what to do, and then you insist on driving, nevermind that it's about a thousand times more risky than flying."

"I'm not ready for that," Artie groused in response. He had taken the controls several times during the flight, but she was right; takeoff and landings still unnerved him. "I'll do it on the return trip, all right?" Joanne nodded at that. "You want to drive?" he asked, as if it were an afterthought, even though he was already starting to pull away from the airfield. He would have stopped if she'd said yes, she knew, but Joanne shook her head. She didn't feel like driving, after over two hours of careful focus to get them to New Mexico in the first place. It was Artie's turn to engage that level of attention to detail, for a while.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Usual thanks go to KJay99 and LadyNRA for the beta work, and for hassling me into doing things that are good for me - like writing this, for one!

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><p>Some time later, after what seemed like hours on a bone-jarring dirt road following along the edge of some kind of ravine, Artie came up to a sandstone butte jutting into the sky and parked. Joanne glanced around at the desert landscape, then turned to her companion, confused.<p>

"Where's the dig site?" she asked, getting straight to the point.

"We go down the ravine, backtrack about half a mile, and through a rocky outcropping," he answered.

"Then why did we drive this far out?" Joanne muttered, more to herself than Artie, but she knew he'd answer anyway.

"Camouflage," he explained, already opening the back of the jeep to rummage through his things. "Parking in the shade of the butte makes it harder to spot the jeep from above, and walking in from the more rocky north edge will give us places to hide if – if the site isn't as unattended as it's supposed to be today. Here, this is your equipment," he said handing a backpack off to Joanne. She took it and rummaged through her own pack, taking only what she would need out of her things, to add to the hiking gear Artie had provided. "Besides," he continued explaining, as if she needed to hear every possible reason for the hike, "if anybody's down there, they wouldn't think twice about a jeep joyriding through the desert on a Sunday afternoon." With that, he started down a rocky trail that looked to Joanne more like erosion from rainfall, than an actual path forged by humans.

She peered over the edge, eyes wide with concern. If this had been more than about thirty feet down, she would have refused to do it without climbing gear, but Artie was already scrambling downward as if he were a freaking bighorn sheep. Joanne shook her head, double-checked the snug fit of her pack, and took one deep, steadying breath before she started after her colleague. Rocks slid out from under her feet almost before she stepped all the way down, and the trail was so vertical that she was able to use her hands and shoulders to "walk" her upper body down the parts that her feet had already traversed. She flinched, but made no sound, as she inadvertently found thorns from nearby plants on the way down, ignoring the beads of blood forming on her hands and forearms. About halfway down, there was a ledge that Artie had already perched on, breathing hard from the exertion even as he was watching her descent carefully, hands outstretched as if he planned to catch her if she lost her footing. Joanne suppressed a laugh at that. Now wasn't the time, but it was one of the funnier things she'd seen the senior agent do.

As soon as she hit the ledge, she reached around behind herself and grabbed the water bottle stuck into a side pocket of her pack. The lid squeaked as it twisted open, and even though it wasn't a loud sound, she instinctively drew the bottle against her stomach to muffle the sound. Now that she was down into the ravine, she realized how much sound echoed around inside it. The barest of breezes topside, sounded like the ocean in a seashell down here. Joanne glanced around, and, seeing no threat to their safety, she let her guard down for just a moment to gaze up at the ravine's edge, and the butte jutting above. The view reminded her of an old Inca story, about the sky being held up by four mountains much like this one, rising up in the four corners of the earth. Artie made what sounded like an impatient scuffling sound, signaling that break time had gone on too long for his liking. After a deep, cleansing breath, she capped her water bottle, and turned back to Artie, only to find that she was alone on the edge. He'd gotten so impatient in the 45 seconds she'd spent admiring nature that he'd gone on without her.

Slightly irritated at having been left behind, Joanne stowed her water bottle and edged up to the trail that continued at the side of the ledge, to get a look at the second half of her descent. What she saw made her feel as if her heart had fallen into the bottom of the ravine. Several feet below her position, Artie dangled helplessly sideways, the waist strap of his hiking pack looped over a small but impressively strong bit of sandstone.

"Artie! What the hell?" she whispered, not sure how her words might echo in this sort of landscape. The old man kicked this way and that until he rotated slowly around, his back against the steeply-descending trail they'd been following, so he could look up at Joanne.

"I'm stuck," he said simply.

"So I see," Joanne answered, trying unsuccessfully to hold back a giggle. Of course, he meant that he'd already tried to free himself and couldn't, but it still amused her.

"Get me down!" Artie snapped in reply, even though he was smiling just a little in spite of himself. Even he knew this situation was funny.

"Hang on, let me figure out how to get to you," Joanne responded as she skimmed her eyes along the features of the landscape, trying to sort out how she was going to solve this problem. Artie had clearly skidded most of the way to his current position, judging by the dust coating most of his body, and the blood oozing from several scrapes on his face and arms. The landscape was substantially more climb-able below Artie, but obviously this upper section was too steep. Working her way around the small ledge, though, Joanne found another water-runoff trail on the other side, near where the ledge cropped out from the side of the ravine. This one involved softer rock, she could tell by the holes that had eroded away over the centuries. At first glance, it seemed more risky, but the holes just might give her a foothold.

"Okay, Artie, I've got a plan. You want to hear it, or you just want me to act on it?" Artie gave her a slightly conflicted look, at the options presented. He often wanted to know everything about everything, which was why she'd given him the choice. After a moment, Artie simply gestured at her to come to him, a wordless answer. "All right, just give me a few minutes."

"Where else am I going to go?" Artie asked, amusement and irritation both coloring his words. Joanne smiled at that, but didn't bother to respond. She was already working her way over the side of the ledge, placing herself against the eroded rock as if it were a ladder as she searched by feel for a good foothold.

"Joanne!" Artie said gruffly when he saw what she was doing. "You can't climb down a sheer face!"

"It's all of eight or nine feet, Artie," she shot back, already taking the first couple of deliberately slow baby steps, testing each foothold thoroughly before shifting her weight. As much as they were both in a hurry to get Artie loose, she was painfully aware that with even a lightweight day pack on, she was far too out of balance to recover if she lost her footing even a little bit.

"It's a straight drop! You can't – you'll fall!" he insisted.

"Oh, and taking the more sloped path worked out so well for you," she grumbled back.

"Just – just be careful!" Artie answered, conceding that she was right, there. After several minutes, Joanne arrived at the very uneven bottom of the ravine, ready to shift position and make her way back up towards her trapped partner.

"Get me out of here!" Artie whispered harshly between clenched teeth as she approached from beneath. Joanne was confused for a moment. Then she saw it – a small, prickly cactus was pressed against Artie's skyward side. Joanne stopped, now. She had envisioned grabbing hold of Artie's feet and pulling him into an upright position so he could climb upward the few inches to unhook himself from the rock. This cactus presented a new obstacle. It was just big enough to prevent him from twisting upright, and even if he could, it would only make things needlessly complicated.

"I'm going to try to rip that cactus out," Joanne said, deciding on a course of action. Artie shook his head firmly, swinging around as he vetoed her.

"That type of cactus has a very strong root system. You'd need a hacksaw to get it out."

"Did you pack a hacksaw?" Joanne asked.

Artie met her questioning green eyes with a perturbed look. "Yes! I – well..."

Joanne sighed at that. "It's up in the car, isn't it?" Artie nodded in response, sending Joanne back into planning mode. She knew one way to get him down, but he wasn't going to like it. "Artie, the only thing I can think of is to unbuckle your waist strap. You're probably going to end up going face-first into the wall. Are you sure you don't want me to try to get back to the jeep and grab the hacksaw?" Artie shook his head.

"The only way back up is the grappling hook," he said. "And that... well, it's in my pack." Joanne covered her mouth to squelch a laugh at that. HG Wells' grappling hook was a thing of beauty, yes, but that was his plan to get out of this ravine? This was going to get interesting, on the return trip!

"All right... I can get a blanket out to cushion your fall-" Artie shook his head before she even finished her sentence. Obviously speed was far more important to him than anything else. Joanne took one more look downward as she scaled the wall to get out of the way of his impending tumble. At least the plant life seemed to end with this one obnoxious cactus at his side. The rest of the way down was eroded rock and sandy grit. One last time, she considered any other options she might have, but even trying to slow his fall by grabbing him was likely to end in Artie pulling her down the ravine along with, increasing their risk of injury exponentially. "Cover your face, at least," Joanne said, reaching for the buckle so far around his side, it was nearly at his back.

She struggled against the pressure he was putting on the strap, at first unable to work the strap, but once she pulled firmly enough, the buckle came undone. She jerked her hands back to avoid getting rope-burn from the strap as gravity finished the job she'd begun. As she had expected, the sudden freedom caused Artie to roll down the less-steep portion of the embankment, the weight of his pack pressing him against the rough landscape before it continued its downward momentum and he half-skidded, half-rolled, nearly ten feet down the steep incline. She was already picking a careful, but hurried, path down to him when he came to rest at the bottom of the ravine.

Joanne frowned slightly, shoving stray auburn locks away from her eyes as she came to him. It bothered her that he simply lay still until she got within arm's reach, and the blood dripping from somewhere within his hair didn't make her feel much better about the situation. She hoped he hadn't ended up with a concussion or anything. Just as she started to get really concerned, though, Artie began struggling this way and that, working to get upright. She put out a hand to help, and Artie took it, allowing his friend to pull him to a sitting position. He again fell still for a minute, which Joanne found just a tad disconcerting.

"You all right?" she asked, even though she knew what his answer would be. The question alone was enough to get him moving again.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Artie mumbled, "just need to get to the dig site and get that artifact," he added as his muscles worked to pull his legs under him, and stand up. He stood still for just a moment before tilting to one side, stumbling towards the steep embankment he'd just fallen down. A hand instinctively shot out to grab a nearby rock, aiding his balance as he staggered just a little bit, evidence that he'd hit his head harder than he probably wanted her to know. Joanne grabbed him by the unbuckled, dangling waist strap of his pack, stopping Artie's progression towards what she supposed was the direction of the dig site.

"Artie, stop, wait," she muttered. He grumbled in irritation, but did as she asked, waiting impatiently as she took a small towel from her pack, doused it with drinking water, and handed it to him. "At least mop up the blood that's fixing to get in your eyes," she instructed.

As he cleaned himself up, she gave him a quick glance, taking in the way he moved, looking for signs of serious injury. She didn't find any, but she did catch sight of a cactus thorn embedded in the side of his shirt, when he lifted his arm to clean the back of his head and neck with the damp napkin. Reflexively, Joanne grabbed the thorn and pulled.

"Ow!" Artie snapped, brown eyes flashing. "What was that?" Wordlessly, Joanne held the thorn up for her friend, who glared at it before she tossed it to the ground.

"Can you follow my finger?" she asked. Annoyed but willing to ease her concern, he tracked the motion of her index finger as she traced a figure eight in the air between them. Satisfied that he wasn't going to drop dead of a head injury or anything, she nodded at the man. "Which way now?" she asked, more to verbally confirm that she felt they were ready to carry on, than because she needed the answer.

"This way," Artie said, his soft volume doing nothing to cover over his angry tone. He froze two steps into the journey, and turned to glance over his shoulder at Joanne. "Um... thanks," he muttered awkwardly.

Joanne smiled and nodded in response. "Any time." She walked slowly for a moment, distracted as she stowed her things, then taking it a little easy as she gave the Warehouse supervisor one more quick glance. His mishap on the rocks had set her on edge, but she set her mind at ease with her surreptitious appraisal of his overall well-being. That concern set aside, she picked up the pace, catching up quickly to the aging man as he picked a careful path through the rugged terrain.

"I'm fine," Artie groused almost before she came back into hearing range. Joanne smiled at that. Of course he would figure out what she was up to; he knew her too well for her to get away with that. But she also knew he appreciated Joanne's attentive yet hands-off way of handing her longtime friend and colleague.

"Course you are," Joanne agreed, slowing down a little bit so as not to get ahead of Artie. The narrow ravine was already giving way to a wider riverbed. She glanced over her shoulder to the right, to see two, maybe three more narrow gorges cut by tributaries that formed this intermittent, yet evidently powerful, river. _How __did __anybody __get __up __the __idea __to __set __up __housekeeping __down __here, __in __what __was __clearly __a __flood plain?_ Joanne gazed around, unable to answer her own question. Her only thought was that erosion had migrated the ruins of the early American civilization into the riverbed... maybe migrated it downstream quite a distance, as well. Joanne kicked those thoughts around, positively fascinated by this opportunity to touch history, as she continued to follow Artie.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Yeah, I know, I take forever. Sorry about that. To recap where we're at now, Artie and my original character, Joanne, have flown themselves to New Mexico to retrieve an artifact from one of the earliest European settlements in the Albuquerque area. It was reported to make a person suddenly become very... well-versed in survivalist skills, I guess you could say. After a little adventure trying to teach Artie how to fly the jet, and then getting down a ravine, they're now almost at the dig site. Special thanks to KJay99 for a lot of help with the suspense and action that I'm still learning how to do, and extra special thanks to all of you who are enduring my slowness, to read the story. I appreciate your patience more than I can convey!

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><p>After several minutes of walking, Artie put a hand up, obviously commanding Joanne to stop. She did so, using the time to take a drink of water. The pilot, accustomed to spending half her life at absurdly high altitude, was in the habit of staying more hydrated than she felt right now, hiking through the New Mexico desert. Even the water seemed a little drier in this climate. She watched silently as Artie crouched up against the side of the riverbed, creeping around the bend a little bit. They must be pretty close if he was assessing the situation, she realized. He crept entirely out of her view in his exploration, putting her on even more full alert as she listened intently for any sign of distress from her friend. A few minutes later, however, Artie's face peeked around a rock, and he beckoned her to join him.<p>

Joanne followed, mindful to not leave too much evidence of her presence, even if they were alone in the ravine. When she came around the bend and took in where most of the digging was going on, she began to understand how relics of a settlement got into a riverbed. Most of the recovery effort seemed focused on a ledge about shoulder-high, suggesting that erosion had brought things into the riverbed. It was probably also responsible for unearthing the antiquities, she realized, thinking back to a large storm she'd had to fly around a few months prior.

She shook off those thoughts and followed her friend to the temporary structure where the archaeologists seemed to be cataloging and storing the remnants of New Mexico's pioneer days. Items and crates lay under a canopy near the door, as if the grad students had gotten careless about organization, under the desert sun. Artie carelessly dropped his tesla into his bag and drew out a set of purple gloves. He wordlessly tossed a pair to Joanne and fished another pair out for himself.

As Joanne wrestled the gloves on – Artie made it look so easy! – she asked, "Artie, what is the artifact that we're looking for? Don't think you mentioned."

"That's because I don't know." He responded quickly. He was poking through an abandoned duffel bag, moving random camping items around. "The police report mentions an out-of-character level of edginess, and some sort of survival skill set…" He drifted off as he considered a rather corroded oil lamp before disregarding it.

Joanne stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the excavation site. "Survival skills?"

"Yeah, the um…" He stood up and made his way over to the dig site to peek into an excavated hole. "A masters student. With no prior knowledge of hunting or trapping, he set up a rabbit snare, and then cooked his catch over an open fire." He made his way back from the roped off area protecting the old remnants of the settlers' site. "So, perhaps, a knife… or, or maybe something along the lines of Davy Crockett's hat. But that's at the Warehouse, of course."

"Of course," Joanne replied with sarcasm. She had no way of knowing that, but Artie was in search mode, so she just let him be. She took a breath of the hot, dry air. _If I were an artifact, where would I be?_

She knew that artifacts seemed to have a life of their own. If the archeologists did come across one, would then even know it? Probably not. But if they did recognize something unusual, wouldn't they, separate it? Keep it safe from the elements at the very least?

Her eye considered the tent that Artie had just then slipped into, having gotten bored with the helter-skelter assortment of relics laying around outside. Made sense. Something should be in there. But Artie had it covered, so she wandered around, trying to think like the crazy people that dug into old dirt for a living. Around the side of the tent, hidden from Artie's view was a rickety shed, hastily put together with wood that left gaps in the walls.

She drifted up to the hastily constructed shed and peeked through one of the gaps. Inside were several wooden crates used for shipping. A small smile crept over her face. She looked for what they constructed for a door and saw that it had a Mastercraft lock on it. "Bingo."

"Artie, I think I found something!" she called, and half a second later, the portly agent trotted around the flap of the tent to her. She pointed at the lock, enjoying the way he lit up at the sight.

A moment later, Artie had rummaged his lock picking tools out of his seemingly bottomless bag and was working the lock. "The kid was picked up two days ago, so I'm not sure, but it shouldn't be anything found after that. Not that much of this stuff seems to be labeled or organized yet."

The pilot just nodded at the info and kept looking through things, while periodically scanning their surroundings. She couldn't help but feel like the rocks were watching them. Maybe some... something, somewhere, was being disturbed with all of the digging going on. Sometimes things were better left alone.

Joanne was brought back to the present by the lock snapping open. Artie gave a start of satisfaction and pause to wipe his brow, wincing as he brushed the injury to his eyebrow, before he stood up. He opened the door and entered the shed, holding the door open for Joanne behind him.

Dust had settled on everything in the shed, let in from the holes in the walls where the planks didn't line up exactly. It was poorly constructed, but fairly sturdy. Joanne looked at first one crate than another. Some had shipping labels but most were unmarked. She reached in and shifted around some packing material, finding only a nicely preserved bit of pottery. It looked distinctly unimpressive, so she picked up the crate and set it on the ground to get to the one below it. This crate was already nailed shut. She tried all the sides briefly, but they were all nailed tight. The pilot scowled at the crate and considered her options. She would need something to pry the lid off- or bash the crate somehow.

Joanne took a breath and got out "Art—" before a crow bar was held up into her line of site. She pulled back a bit, then took the crow bar and smirked at Artie who foresaw her request far enough into the future to not only locate the tool, but use it and then hand if off to her. As soon as she took it, he was elbow deep in his crate searching the contents.

She soon had the top of the shipping crate off and set the crow bar aside. Her curiosity had her digging into the packaging material with excitement. It was sort of like Christmas and a scavenger hunt all in one. She wondered briefly if she didn't like this just a little bit better than her own job - if maybe she'd rather be an agent, facing adventure and danger in the hunt for mysterious, dangerous items that you never quite knew what it was until you were looking at it. For a moment, Joanne even contemplated what it might take to become a Warehouse agent, until she started to seriously consider giving up her sky, and the partnership of mutual respect that she had spent years forging with the often challenging, fickle friend.

Periodically, Joanne pulled things up from the packing fibers. Petrified corncob... probably not. Some kind of hinge, definitely not. This seemed pointless, but she kept rummaging anyway, determined to do a thorough job. She smiled when her fingers came upon something very familiar. A book! Also probably not the artifact, but she pulled it up, just the same. Joanne had always had a very soft spot in her heart for books of all kinds, and this one was no exception. The rest of this stuff struck her as more or less junk, relics from an earlier age, that should be left to decay right where they'd been abandoned. But a book... this, she had to read. Continuing to rummage absently with one hand, she deftly held the book in her other hand, turning the pages carefully with her pinky finger.

Artie, listen to this." She returned to the spidery handwriting and couldn't help but start reading the sage out loud. "October 17, 1880. Winter is coming, I can feel it. I fear that this hostile landscape has not provided us with enough food to last until spring. Many of the others feel the same, but none speak of it. We only look upon each other with the combined resolve that we will make it through. We must. All of us."

"Sound like they had an incredibly strong will to survive." Artie said, his voice trailing off. He suddenly looked at her over his shoulder, then turned around. "Joanne! That book! What are you— _**don't read that!**_" He darted across the room in a blur sending crates flying in his rush. He knocked the book from her grip sending it flying.

The pilot scowled at him. "Hey! What gives, Artie!"

He forcefully grabbed her with both hands and peered deeply into her eyes. "Are you all right?"

"Of course I am! Have you lost your mind?" She vaguely realized that her heart was pounding was faster and harder than it should be, but she really liked that journal; it nearly spoke aloud to her through its gripping tale, told so simply and yet eloquently in the author's elegant handwriting.

Artie released her and looked around for the journal. He located it on a crate, but left it there and went for his bag instead. "Do NOT touch that again, Joanne," he said over his shoulder. "Let me neutralize it and see if that's our artifact." He was reaching for his bag when he froze. He was staring into a pair of dark eyes that were staring right back through the half open door.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Thanks again for hanging in there with me. Managed to do myself injury and had to miss a day of school, so I figured I'd kill some time working on this chapter for you all, rather than just sit in front of the TV! Lots of thanks and cookies to my editor, KJay99!

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><p><em>Artie released her and looked around for the journal. He located it on a crate, but left it there and went for his bag instead. "Do NOT touch that again, Joanne," he said over his shoulder. "Let me neutralize it and see if that's our artifact." He was reaching for his bag when he froze. He was staring into a pair of dark eyes that were staring right back through the half open door.<em>

Before Joanne could even react to Artie's quiet gasp, he'd already leaped across the small shed and slammed the door shut, bracing it quickly with his crowbar, then shoving a box against the door.

"Poachers!" he said urgently, shooting a meaningful look at his companion. Joanne immediately glanced around, looking for defense options.

"Tesla," she responded, coming immediately to a conclusion about how to get out of this situation in the most efficient manner. Artie was already rummaging in his bag, so Joanne leaned her weight against the door to secure it while she waited. After a moment's tense wait, she glanced over her shoulder. "Artie come on, wh- what's wrong?" The portly agent was just standing there, staring at the defensive weapon with a deeply perturbed expression.

"Oh there are too many things to list," Artie groused, "but the big one right now is, apparently Pete didn't bother to charge his, so he just swapped them."

"It's dead," Joanne said softly. It wasn't a question. She blew out an irritated sigh. Discarding the rant she wanted to let loose with, she instead took mental inventory of what they did have on-hand.

"So we have a crowbar and whatever happens to be in those boxes," she surmised. "And this" she said, holding up the pried-off crate lid, with about two dozen long nails protruding from it. Artie glanced at the woman, his irritated expression giving way to a huff of laughter when he saw what she was holding. "And it sounds like there are only two, maybe three of them out there."

"Maybe we can..." Artie began to plot, before he stopped suddenly. "Does it bother you that they're not trying to get in here and – and whatever it is they intend to do?" Joanne had been aware of the scuffling that they'd been hearing, but it wasn't until Artie pointed it out that she realized what felt amiss about it. She stepped towards the door, intent on peeking through any cracks she could, but the answer to what their unexpected visitors were doing, hit her nose before she made it three steps.

"Artie, tell me you don't smell that," she said, after taking a couple of deep breaths. Artie paused in his muttering hunt for an escape, and stuck his own nose into the air a little more, inhaling a couple of times before moving towards the doorway as his mutters shifted from agitated to downright concerned. He began peering through the cracks in the wood slats of the building, and Joanne followed suit, trying to see what she could take in. What she saw made her blood run cold.

"I got three guys with guns trained on the door," she informed Artie.

"They've got a crate full of packing material on fire, on my side. They must- they're planning to smoke us out," he said after evaluating what he could.

"Plan?" Joanne asked.

"Yeah, we're going to use the crowbar to pry a few slats off of the building, crawl out of here and... and hopefully not get shot." Joanne sighed in resignation, at Artie's words.

"Well, it's not much use holding the door, not with all their firepower," she muttered, grabbing the crowbar away from the door handle and handing it over to Artie. She stood alongside to help remove the slats quietly as he worked them gently away from the vertical supports. Both took a deep, relieved breath of air when they got the first one pushed back so it could be rotated and pulled in through the newly-formed opening. Now, at least, they had some fresh airflow to combat the smoke that was starting to fill the small building. With the first slat in hand, Joanne turned to lay it down on a nearby crate when she saw something that made her feel lightheaded from the adrenaline burst. Now she knew why it felt so much brighter in here as the first slat had given way.

"Problem!" Joanne said softly, but urgently. Artie glanced over his shoulder, still working on the second board, to see what Joanne was indicating. He moaned in irritation when he saw what had concerned his temporary partner.

"Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding me," Artie grumbled as he stopped prying to get a better look at the burning sawdust on the floor of the shed. "Their improvised bonfire must have- the artifact!" Artie pointed and moved towards the journal, which was laying on the ground where he had dropped it when he'd first jumped into action to protect them from the poachers. Joanne, though, being closer, got to it first.

"It's fine, keep working," she snapped at the elder man, even as he was already redirecting himself once he saw her retrieve the artifact. She blew out an irritated sigh. It was smoldering a little bit. Joanne thought to bury it quickly in some dirt, to smother the flame, but the ground here was rock-solid from being traipsed all over by a pack of archaeologists. Instead, she did the only other thing she could think of quickly – she pressed it to her stomach and curled her body around the book, flinching slightly at the heat that quickly came through her breathable springtime wardrobe. As soon as she felt the heat dissipate, she let go of the book and tossed it hurriedly into Artie's bag, along with a few other important-looking finds that she could scoop up on her way back to helping Artie. It wasn't the best place for valuable artifacts, she knew, but at least they were relatively safer there, while she returned to the task of removing the second slat.

"I think we just need one more..." Artie muttered as he began work on the third slat.

"No way," Joanne responded, shoving him out of the way without another word. Leaving Artie grumbling at her, she squeezed her body through the too-small opening, tearing the hip of her jeans a tiny bit in the process, and then quickly ripped two more slats off the siding with her bare hands. "Come on!" she snapped at the man, already reaching back in to grab his bag. Artie gave the woman a strange look, beginning to wonder where her new level of survival instinct had come from, as he wiggled his way through the opening. The space was still a bit on the tight side for him, but the smoke was starting to get heavy, and if they were going to get away from this death trap, they couldn't afford for him to cough and hack, and alert the poachers.

Once outside, Artie saw just how dire their situation had become. Smoke curled from multiple cracks in the small shelter, and the billowing blaze had begun to lick the canvas awning by the door, leaving it scorched and smoldering. The entire shed would be gone soon, and the archaeological artifacts all with it. With a cringe at the thought of so much lost history, Artie turned away from the fire and focused himself on an escape plan. Wordlessly, he pointed. Joanne looked up and down the ravine, and nodded in understanding... or at least, he hoped that was understanding. Without another sound, he acted upon his plan. Joanne grabbed her pack, which she'd thankfully left alongside the shack, outside of the poachers' view. The pair then made their way in a straight line away from the shed, using it for cover as they made their way to the far side of the ravine.

Once there, they ducked behind the rocky outcroppings and began working their way, too slowly for Joanne's liking, north through the ravine, towards the jeep. Almost compulsively, Joanne grabbed pieces of the scenery as she went by, nabbing a bit of rotting cactus here, a rock-hard seed pod there. As she moved through the difficult terrain, she busied her hands weaving and braiding some pieces together, preparing herself for the inevitable. She didn't have to wait long for that moment.

They had only made it a few hundred feet away when shouts suddenly arose from the dig site. Artie glanced over his shoulder and groaned, causing Joanne to pause and look back herself. A sudden plume of smoke rose up from the shed. Either it had finally gone up, or the poachers had realized that they should have fled the smoke by now, and opened the door. Artie picked up the pace, and Joanne followed suit, until suddenly another shout made them both duck instinctively. Shots rang out in the ravine. They must have been spotted.

Artie's instinct was to run for it, but when he turned to communicate that to Joanne, he lurched to a stop, and stared. That crazy woman was running _towards_ the scene! "Joanne!" Artie hissed, as loudly as he dared, even though he suspected by her total lack of reaction that it wasn't loud enough.

He watched in a blend of curiosity and horror as the Joanne bolted towards the men, grabbing a baseball-sized rock and launching it at one of them with some kind of slingshot made of the plant overgrowth they'd been running past. Artie expected the guy to notice, but apparently in his single-minded focus on them, he didn't see it coming because the next thing to happen was that right as he aimed his weapon, the rock came down on top of his head.

Artie wasn't sure if the guy was unconscious or dead, but when he saw the next two coming, he decided that didn't matter. Joanne couldn't possibly hit both of them at once. He debated using the grappling hook in his bag to try to incapacitate one of the poachers, although he had no idea how the strange, antique-yet-futuristic technology would react to being aimed and fired at a living being. But by the time he got his hand around it and looked back up, another large rock was already sailing towards their pursuers. The second target stumbled briefly, disoriented, and even at this distance, Artie could see the blood dripping from what had to be a large gash on his forehead.

Joanne dove to the ground, rolling head over heels at least twice more along the ground as the poachers' approach became more angry, more threatening. From somewhere within the tumbling mess of pilot, plant life, and dust, another rock sailed up into the air. Shocked by Joanne's sudden skills, skills that he knew she did not possess last week, Artie began to wonder what was going on here. In a flash, it came to him, and he glanced down into his bag, seeing the journal laying among his things, unbagged. Artie's shoulders slumped just a little bit when he realized he didn't have an artifact bag with him. They were in his newly-acrobatic friend's pack.

Suddenly, shots began to ring out in the ravine. Artie's head snapped up to see two of the poachers on their feet, one already aiming a high-powered rifle at them. This time, Joanne was close enough to them to launch what looked like a cactus rib at the men, knocking the rifle out of the one poacher's hands. Before Artie had a chance to act, the second one leveled a gun at him and fired.

Artie's eyes went wide as saucers as he felt a wind graze the top of his head. Reaching up, he felt hair slightly singed by the deadly projectile. Before he could even process this new information, a large piece of brush sailed through the air, and Joanne blew past Artie.

"Come on!" she yelled as she picked up speed through the canyon. Artie didn't have to be told twice. He turned and followed, going on blind hope that she'd done enough to disable their pursuers so they could get some distance between them.

"Good... work!" Artie cheered between panting breaths as they came closer to the jeep. He was certain they were still being pursued, but no more shots had been fired – yet, anyway.

"I doubt that will stop them," the pilot pointed out.

"If it gets us to the car, that's good enough," Artie responded. "I have a handgun there, for defense." Joanne paused just long enough to cause them both to stumble slightly.

"You have.. and you left.." she muttered, then just shook her head in frustration.

"It was supposed to be easy!" Artie snapped.

"You work for the Warehouse!" Joanne snapped right back. Artie opened his mouth to argue, but then he realized his friend was right. He grunted and kept moving, now that they were far enough ahead that it was relatively safe to just run straight through the less-cluttered middle of the dry riverbed.

When they got back to the butte where they'd left the jeep, she finally turned to see Artie hanging onto the journal with his teeth while he rummaged around in his pack with his other hand. She grabbed the journal from him and shoved it into her back pocket, then helped him rummage for the grappling gun. Artie's face lit up and she stopped, realizing that he'd found his target.

"How do we use this?" Joanne asked, not entirely sure how it worked, and now wasn't the time to just try something and hope for the best.

"Grab here," Artie said, pointing to the part of the handle that his pudgy hand wasn't occupying. "Then we point, shoot, and hang on." Joanne took a deep, calming breath, and closed her eyes. Flying inside an airplane was one thing... flying up the side of a rocky ravine like a superhero, relying on a device designed by one of Victorian England's most bizarre citizens, though? That, she wasn't so sure about. Artie aimed, pulled the trigger, and Joanne flinched slightly as the device yanked her by one arm skyward, leaving her stomach on the ground below. The ride ended with them hanging mostly in the ravine. Without another thought, Joanne yanked herself up onto the top of the mesa, then grabbed Artie and jerked him up, as well. She didn't stop to look back towards the dig site until they were safely in the jeep, and Artie was flooring it back towards the highway. A curl of smoke drifted up from the dig site, but more worrisome was the trail of dust, such as from a fast-moving jeep, that had started to drift up from the winding ravine.


End file.
